Infinity Shot
by carcassi
Summary: A short ficlet to answer a question that's been bugging me since Zod aired: Why didn't Jimmy ever call Chloe after their brief encounter during their summer internship at the Planet? Chlark as seen through Jimmy's eyes. Very short.Jimmy monologue, rated


**A/N:** This came to me after "Wither," when I decided I liked Jimmy (although not as a "serious" love interest for Chloe). The problem was, I couldn't understand why a guy like Jimmy would give Chloe the cold shoulder, back in their intern years. This is my take on the real reason.

**Infinity Shot**

_"Infinity shot": A photo that combines both near and distant objects or people, all in the same focus._

Normally I'm not a superstitious guy, but on the day I was reunited with Chloe Sullivan in the offices of the _Daily Planet_, the Earth moved, and the world almost ended.

I can take a hint. It was as if Fate grabbed me by the shoulders and yelled in my face, "Don't mess it up _this_ time, Olsen."

No chance. I'd been lucky enough to catch her eye, back when we were both high-school interns at the _Planet_, and wow, _that_ had been unbelievable. She was like holding bottled sunshine—sunshine that snarked, OK, but made you feel warm and hot and happy too. I followed her lead in that romance, just as I had all summer long on the job, and it left me breathless.

I don't think I ever took any pictures of Chloe where she wasn't in motion. Every close-up shot I have of her is slightly out of focus, no matter how fast I adjusted the shutter speed. She was always on her way somewhere, always one step ahead of me.

After our encounter—well, I called it an "encounter," she called it a "hook-up"—Chloe laughed it off, thanked me, and dove right back into newsroom life the way a duck dives into water. Summer was almost over, and I figured she wasn't interested, so I didn't call her.

Alright, that's a cop-out. The truth is, I was _afraid_ she wasn't interested. I didn't want to get hurt. That's the real reason I backed off and stopped taking those close-ups.

When we ran into each other that day at the Planet, I couldn't believe my luck. I felt like hugging her right there in the newsroom, and I would have if it hadn't been for the pistol she had pointed at my chest.

Would you believe, with the whole world collapsing around us, the first thing that occurred to me to ask was, "Is this because I didn't call?" Smooth, Olsen.

Amazingly, she didn't shoot, and things improved from there. Not being the type of guy who looks a gift horse in the mouth, I thanked whoever or whatever was giving me this second chance to make it up to her. And to make up for that other guy, the one I figured had already hurt her.

Of course I knew there was another guy, even though Chloe never mentioned him. People say I've got a good eye for faces, and Chloe's is more expressive than most. When we chatted about the tornado that hit during her school's Spring Formal that year, she seemed fine until I asked if she'd gone to the Formal with her boyfriend. Suddenly her eyes turned dark, she looked away, and picked up a takeout menu, asking if I liked sushi for lunch.

Whoever put that look in her eyes, right there and then I decided I didn't like him.

That's before I met him. The Big Guy. Mount Kansas. A.K.A., Clark Kent. Who knew he'd be so hard to hate?

Of course he was the one, I could tell that by the way she smiled at him when she introduced him to me, and by the way he narrowed his eyes and frowned at me. There was something weird about that stare, too. Until I saw it, I thought "red eye" was just something PhotoShop auto-corrected.

The weirdest thing about C.K. was that for a hugely impressive guy, he seemed so normal. I could snap a picture of him from any angle and get the same result each time: A four-by-six glossy of a handsome farmboy hunk, easy to capture and in perfect focus.

Only I knew it wasn't that simple. Something about C.K. was too big to fit into a frame, and I'm not talking about his size.

Have you ever tried to take a picture of the Grand Canyon? I did a couple of years ago for a photo shoot, and I learned right away the difference between a picture and the real thing. Nothing, not even a wide-angle lens set for infinite depth to keep everything in focus, could make you feel the awesome power of that place. It takes one hell of an infinity shot just to begin to suggest it.

This is really going to sound strange, but just then, that's how I felt about C.K. Like he'd be the perfect subject for the ultimate infinity shot.

Crazy, huh? I'm probably just jealous, because I know that when Chloe looks at him, she sees something she doesn't see in me, and it's something no camera will ever be able to pick up. As for C.K., he glowers so much every time I'm around it's hard to tell what he thinks, except that he'd like me to go far, far away. But when he glances at Chloe, the glower always disappears, and the looks I've seen them share have words in them that I'll never understand.

It's pretty clear these two got their signals crossed somewhere, maybe even as far back as that Spring Formal Chloe won't talk about. I wonder if she pushed him away, just like she did to me that summer. I wonder why.

Doesn't matter, I guess. When I see those two, I can't help putting Chloe and me both into my imaginary infinity shot of C.K. We're in close-up, against that enormous background, and I'm the only one out of focus. No matter how often I call Chloe "my girl" (and she laughs in my face), I know it's only a matter of time before I fade out of the picture.

After all, what kind of competition am I for the Grand-freaking Canyon?

But that's tomorrow. I'm a "today" kind of guy. I intend to enjoy the ride all the way to that canyon's edge. I already know what C.K. will find out someday: Chloe's worth it.

**THE END**


End file.
